SubscribeLe Zeyer
Our next walk will cover the neighborhood of Montsouris where Henry Miller lived from 1934 to 1939. To arrive at our first stop, take the metro to the Alésia station, which is on line 4 (Paris metro map PDF).
As you emerge from the metro, notice the bright yellow awning which swathes the brasserie astride one corner of the bustling carrefour d’Alésia. This is Le Zeyer, to which Miller returned nearly every day throughout the years he lived in the nearby Villa Seurat.
Miller and his boon companion Alfred Perlès favored the Zeyer when they were “in funds” or whenever they could coax Michael Fraenkel into treating them to a meal. Fraenkel often dined here alone. Perlès remembered the Zeyer as, “a gaudy place with red plush and mirrors and polished brass; the perpetual odor of choucroûte garnie, gauloise bleues and fine à l’eau“. Fine à l’eau (brandy and seltzer) was their regular drink here because it was the cheapest option at one franc seventy-five.
On November 1, 1935, Miller, Perlès and Fraenkel were gathered at the Zeyer when they struck upon the idea to collaborate on book of exactly one thousand pages.
“A thousand pages!” Fraenkel shrieked. He was already a little tipsy. “A thousand pages—no less!”
“No more either,” I said.
“Don’t worry, Joey. We’ll make it a thousand pages, not a line more—even if we have to stop in the middle of a sentence,” said Henry
—Alfred Perlès, My Friend Henry Miller
The book was to take the form of an exchange of letters and for its subject they eventually settled on Hamlet, though the writing soon departed from Shakespeare’s play to wander all about the philosophical terrain. Perlès dropped out of the project, but Miller and Fraenkel continued on, eventually completing a book published in two volumes. The following is from Miller’s opening Hamlet letter:
We sit in the Café Zeyer and we decide to write this book. It is not a book that the French will like. It is not a book for our American compatriots either. Yet this book is born of France and of America. Born in a moment of extreme lassitude, born out of a despair created by the inertia and paralysis surrounding us.
In Hamlet, the spectacle of Miller’s odd philosophical relationship with Fraenkel’s intellect is on full display. At every turn one finds Fraenkel struggling vainly to tie the discourse down to his pet theme of the artist’s death to society while Miller charges ahead to enact the artist’s rebirth.
Location
62 rue d’Alésia – See it on Google Maps
Next Stop
Our next stop is just on the other side of the intersection at the Bouquet d’Alésia … 
